CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK

• US 20090157850A1
• Filed: 12/12/2008
• Published: 06/18/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: StackPath LLC
• Original Assignee: Highwinds Holdings, Inc.
• Inventors: Gagliardi, Joshua D., Munger, Timothy S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,962,580 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A content delivery system for providing content from a content delivery network to end users may include a plurality of delivery servers that host one or more content items and an inventory server having an inventory of content. The inventory of content can indicate which of the delivery servers host the content items. The inventory server may receive a request for a content item from an end user system and may access the inventory of content to determine one or more delivery servers that host the content item. In response to this determination, the inventory server may redirect the request for the content item to a selected one of the delivery servers. The selected delivery server can then serve the content item to the end user system.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of providing content to end users from a content delivery network comprising one or more delivery servers having computer hardware and an inventory server having computer hardware, the method comprising:

receiving, with a content delivery network, a content item from a content provider, the content provider providing a web site;

returning a uniform resource indicator (URI) corresponding to the content item, the URI operative to identify the inventory server in the content delivery network;

provisioning the content item to the one or more delivery servers in the content delivery network, the one or more delivery servers each comprising computer hardware;

in response to the one or more delivery servers receiving the content item, providing to the inventory server a message from each of the one or more delivery servers that have received the content item, the message reflecting the receiving of the content item by the one or more delivery servers;

storing inventory information in an inventory of the inventory server, the inventory information describing which of the one or more delivery servers hosts the content item;

receiving, with the inventory server, a request for the content item from an end user, the request specifying the URI, the end user having received the URI in response to accessing the web site of the content provider;

accessing the inventory to determine a selected delivery server that hosts the content item;

redirecting the request for the content item to the selected delivery server; and

providing the content item to the end user from the selected delivery server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the inventory information comprises at least one mapping of a name of the content item with a network address for one or more of the delivery servers that host the content item.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising propagating the inventory information to other inventory servers in the content delivery network.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the content item comprises sending one or more messages each containing a portion of the content item using a push-based network protocol to the one or more delivery servers.

5. A computer-implemented method of provisioning content in a content delivery network, the method comprising:

provisioning a content item to first delivery servers selected from a plurality of delivery servers, each of the plurality of delivery servers comprising computer hardware;

in response to a selected one of the first delivery servers receiving the content item, providing to an inventory server an inventory message from the selected delivery server, the inventory message reflecting the receiving of the content item by the selected delivery server; and

storing, with the inventory server, an inventory in physical computer storage, the inventory indicating which of the delivery servers hosts the content item.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing a content delivery network comprising the plurality of delivery servers.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein said provisioning content comprises randomly selecting the first delivery servers to receive the content item.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein storing the inventory comprises storing a network address for the selected delivery server in association with a name of the content item.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein the selected delivery server allows an operating system installed on the selected delivery server to manage caching of the content item into computer memory, without using any additional caching mechanisms.

10. The method of claim 5, further comprising propagating the inventory message to other inventory servers in the content delivery network.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising providing a network address for the content item to a content provider, the network address operative to indicate a selected one of the inventory servers.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising receiving, with the selected inventory server, a request for the content item.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising accessing the inventory of the selected inventory server to determine a second delivery server that hosts the content, and providing a network address for the second delivery server responsive to the request.

14. The method of claim 5, wherein at least some of the first delivery servers are located in different data centers.

15. A content delivery system for providing content from a content delivery network to end users, the system comprising:

a plurality of delivery servers in a content delivery network, the delivery servers comprising computer hardware, at least some of the delivery servers hosting one or more content items; and

an inventory server, the inventory server comprising an inventory of content, the inventory of content indicating which of the delivery servers host the one or more content items, the inventory server operative to;

receive a request for a content item, the request specifying a logical location of the content item;

use the logical location of the content item to access the inventory of content to determine one or more delivery servers that host the content item, and

redirect the request for the content item to a selected one of the delivery servers, such that the selected delivery server is operative to serve the content item.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein said redirection comprises providing a network address for one of the delivery servers.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the network address specifies a path and file name of the content item on one of the delivery servers.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the logical location comprises a uniform resource identifier.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the inventory comprises mappings of content item file names and network addresses of one or more of the delivery servers.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein said redirection comprises performing Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) redirection.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein said redirection comprises performing a direct server return.

22. The system of claim 15, further comprising a server of last resort operative to serve the content item in response to the selected delivery server being unable to serve the content item.

23. A system for provisioning content in a content delivery network, the system comprising:

a content delivery network comprising a plurality of delivery servers, each of the delivery servers comprising computer hardware;

one or more propagation servers operative to provision a content item to first delivery servers selected from the plurality of delivery servers;

each of the first delivery servers operative to provide to a server a message reflecting the receiving of the content item by the first delivery server, in response to the first delivery server receiving the content item; and

the server operative to store an inventory in physical computer storage, the inventory indicating which of the delivery servers hosts the content item.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the one or more propagation servers provision the content using a Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

25. The system of claim 23, wherein the one or more propagation servers provision the content item via multiple parallel channels.

26. The system of claim 23, wherein at least some of the channels provide the content item to different geographical regions of the content delivery network.

27. The method of claim 23, wherein the one or more propagation servers are further configured to automatically propagate the content item to additional delivery servers in response to a determination that deliveries of the content item exceed a threshold bandwidth.

28. The system of claim 23, wherein the one or more propagation servers provision the content using a Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

29. The system of claim 23, wherein the server operative to store the inventory is substantially limited in function to storing inventory and redirecting content requests.